OptionMetrics has launched IvyDB TradeFlow, a new data product designed to give institutional desks visibility into buying and selling order flow in the listed options market, including retail trading behavior and participation in zero-days-to-expiration (0DTE) contracts.

The launch addresses a long-standing analytical gap on institutional options desks. Most public options data — the daily files exchanges publish through OPRA and consolidated vendor feeds — identifies open interest, volume and quote activity, but does not label individual trades as customer buy-initiated or sell-initiated. Firms that wanted order flow attribution typically had to license more expensive exchange-level datasets or build their own inference models. OptionMetrics is packaging that attribution into its IvyDB ecosystem, the database family that already anchors much of the institutional derivatives research workflow.

According to the company, IvyDB TradeFlow gives buy-side and sell-side users the ability to distinguish buy-side from sell-side pressure in options flow, to isolate retail trading behavior, and to measure participation in 0DTE options — the same-day-expiry contracts that now account for a substantial share of single-name and index option volume.

For execution desks, the practical value is straightforward. Knowing whether a volume spike reflects opening purchases or closing sales changes how a trader interprets a fast tape, and whether the flow is institutional or retail changes how much that tape should move a hedge or a quote. On the risk side, 0DTE participation metrics matter for gamma exposure calculations that dealers and buy-side risk managers run intraday. A standardized feed of trade-initiation flags removes a layer of custom inference that many desks currently maintain in-house.

OptionMetrics positions the product as an extension of its existing IvyDB coverage, which spans historical options prices, implied volatility surfaces and related analytics used by quants, market makers and asset managers. Firms already operating inside that ecosystem can integrate TradeFlow fields alongside existing volatility and pricing data rather than stitching together a second vendor feed.

The launch also reflects where the options market has moved. 0DTE volume in index products has grown to the point where it shapes intraday equity index dynamics, and retail participation in options — through zero-commission broker platforms — has become a persistent feature of the market rather than an episodic one. Regulators, including FINRA and the SEC, have flagged 0DTE activity in public commentary as an area they watch; exchanges have launched dedicated expirations to capture the demand. Institutions without a clean read on who is trading, and in which direction, have been flying partially blind on a segment that now drives a measurable share of daily contract volume.

What TradeFlow actually measures — and how it attributes trades — will determine its desk utility. Vendor order flow classifications are inferred from trade prints against prevailing quotes, not observed directly, and inference accuracy varies with market conditions, spread width and trade size. OptionMetrics has not detailed in the announcement the specific methodology TradeFlow uses to classify initiator, to separate retail from institutional flow, or to compute 0DTE participation. Desks evaluating the product will want to benchmark those classifications against exchange-provided or internally built measures before wiring TradeFlow into production signals, execution analytics or risk models.

The commercial terms — pricing, delivery format, history depth and update frequency — are also not specified in the announcement. OptionMetrics' IvyDB products are typically delivered as end-of-day historical files with multi-decade history; whether TradeFlow follows that cadence or offers intraday updates matters for desks that want order flow attribution in near-real-time rather than for post-trade research and backtesting.

The product is available now, according to the company.

Going forward, expect institutional adoption to turn on validation: if TradeFlow's initiation flags and retail attribution hold up against exchange benchmarks, it becomes a cheap default input for options flow analytics; if not, desks will keep building their own.